The media industry has many avenues for providing users with entertainment sources, through television, film, gaming, etc. As the number of available broadcast channels, IPTV (Internet Protocol television) sources, recorded programs, on-demand videos, and on-demand games grow in number, users face the daunting task of trying to find programs of interest. Locating an item of interest among the thousands of items of content, in a television environment, poses a major challenge in that time spent searching undercuts the objective of providing the user with more variety. Reduction or streamlining of content is unacceptable, particularly in light of the competitive landscape of media delivery. However, the user's task of selecting desired content becomes more onerous as the number and variety of content continues to increase. For instance, content from IP sources can be made available to television (TV) systems; the global Internet is replete with user generated video streams, web casts, etc. Undoubtedly, the user interface must keep pace with the explosion of content.
Common methods of locating content include text search and category browsing. Text search can accurately find content, but is slow and cumbersome with the current generation of remote control technologies. Category hierarchies, such as those employed in many current video-on-demand (VOD) systems, are slow and often result in empty or non-interesting sets of results. This causes users to “bob” through the groupings: traversing deep into one area of the hierarchy, coming back up, traversing down yet another area. It is noted that users often trying to find a branch they had viewed previously before finally choosing a program. This laborious process can easily discourage a user from selecting content all together; in a pay-per-view scenario, this results in loss of revenue for the service providers.
Therefore, there is a need for efficiently browsing through content listings.